The Mist -- or, DAMN that hurts.
I'll keep this short.
Laura and I saw The Mist on Wednesday night with about 50 other people at the Lowes. The first act is pretty slow and plot-devicey. It's all about getting everyone in that supermarket and showing the various character types that are going to butt heads in acts 2 & 3.
The movie is pretty good. The strongest visuals rely on the "seeing things, but not really seeing things" effect. But most of the goodness of the film stems from the last half hour or so. The special effects are pretty bad (the film had a 20 million budget. that's right -- 20 million. for everything.) Darabont does some nice things with the atmosphere and relies on the mist itself to make some of the stuff more scary. but when the effects need to be good, especially in an early scene, they are not good. in fact, they are Tuesday afternoon Sci-Fi channel bad.
Main character (name escapes me, as does the actor) is great. Good acting, interesting enough character. Everyone else is okay -- marginal performances, but better than any b-movie crap horror remake that gets vomited out recently.
Marcia Gay Harden who is stuck with a ridiculously poor set of speeches to work with. The only reason you don't laugh is because Harden is good enough to make you think twice about laughing. but then, eventually, you do laugh because her character is ridiculous. i don't care what anyone says. Just because Harden does a good job doesn't mean the character is ridiculous. she (the char, not harden) suffers from Nicholson-in-the-Shining-osis. Essentially, that she's crazy from moment 1, so you know she's not worth caring about in any sense. but she's also not complex in any way. You don't SEE her lose her mind. You just know she lost it at some point waaay back in her past. she's a joke to everyone and when she manages to get a bunch of people to listen to her, you're supposed to see her as a threat. but she's still a joke, as are the people who follow her (as evidenced by one particular shot of a character who switches sides -- it's funny when you see this particular character join her in prayer).
On to the more spoilerific responses and my thoughts on the ending for those of you with no interest in seeing the film or for those of you that already experienced the gut-wrenching film....
The end of act 1 involves horrible CGI tentacles killing someone, although the buildup to the attack is great. In fact, act 1 has a couple of great moments that rely on things NOT being seen -- an earthquake and something knocking on the loading bay doors. but the tentacles (and we never see what they're attached to) are shitty looking.
and then one of the characters that I thought would stick around up ends up walking out of the supermarket. go figure. i guess even in 2007 -- after it's been pointed out to the point of stupidity -- the only black character still dies in the first act. unbelievable. especially since the actor (again, name escapes me) is the only other person with presence in the movie. (Well, William Sadler is great, but he's just background in this). i found this character (only black character) to be intriguing until the script makes him act stupid. after the tentacle attack, which he didn't see, he says that the people who did see it are playing a trick on everyone. And rather than going to the loading dock to see the evidence (and the black guy is a FUCKING LAWYER no less) he just refuses to believe what he's told and then gets some other people together and leaves.
The main character and his son are the only real characters, acting not out of script direction but real motivation for survival. yeah, the son is only like 8 but he's good. i was impressed.
Act 2 is when things get going and get better. Marcia Gay Harden's crazy Christian woman gains some favor with the nameless people who are too scared to do anything. There's a decent scene where insectoids attack the supermarket and someone catches himself on fire. Things escalate as a group decides to travel outside to the pharmacy next door to get supplies to help the wounded. there's tension in the mist! and then a really good scene in close quarters of the pharmacy where spider creatures attack. the juxtaposition of the open, bright supermarket to the dark, tight pharmacy is great both for the effectiveness of the action sequences.
But here in the pharmacy we have the first moment of true silliness regarding the main story (ie, what is the Mist and where did all these creatures come from?) a wounded MP who makes a brief appearance early in the film manages to blurt out that "we're responsible" and "it's all our fault." Uh-oh! The military is responsible? You mean it's not God, like Marcia Gay Harden has been claiming all along? No fucking way! and somehow an MP knows???? and then a private and his 2 buddies will explain the rest???? you don't say!
I think this movie would have been way more powerful if there was no attempt to explain anything. Much like The Birds. You'd think the crazy attempt to explain things in Maximum Overdrive (based on King's Trucks, where machines essentially rebel and a guy tries to survive at a gas station -- in the film the explanation is that aliens are controlling the machines) would have taught Darabont a lesson here. The explanation only ruins the overall mood.
So, sure enough, the story comes out that the military opened a doorway to another dimension and blah blah blah Harden's followers kill the soldier boy in the supermarket. so, the mist is filled with HP Lovecraft creatures. fair enough. but why explain? Why not let the audience think that maybe it is the rapture? what difference would it really make, except that the military WOULD do something dumbass-stupid like this?
one thing I will say about this flick -- no one is safe. NO ONE.
The third act essentially involves the two remaining groups getting all up in one another's grills. or faces. or whatever. super likable hero and son decide, with a couple of others, to get out of the supermarket, get to the land rover, and head south until the gas runs out. better than waiting to become sacrifices to vengeful Christian god.
So, then there's this last 20 minutes or so -- 5 people escape to the land rover: man, son, woman, old man, old woman. There's a driving sequence with really annoying music (think cats trying opera) and some great, really great, visuals of creatures of various sizes in the mist.
Then the gas runs out. but the mist remains. A tense moment and man realizes his gun only has 4 bullets. Doh! man kills everyone except himself.
and 5 minutes later the military shows up, blow-torching everyone in sight.
It's one of those endings that really kicks you in the gut and also makes you pound your forehead in frustration. The fact that this guy has to shoot everyone, including his son, is fucking BOLD and BRILLIANT. movies don't do that kind of shit very often, and it's kinda good they don't because when it happens it fucking HAPPENS. (one of my favorite visuals is the land rover, shot from low and in the back, sitting in the mist. very washed out shot and thenbright orange blasts of 4 gun shots in the cabin. you see nothing else (again!) -- just the suggestion of what's happened. Then it jump cuts to likable hero's face in agony, shouting.
but then that damn military shows up. for what purpose? i mean, if the movie ends with the guy alone waiting for death, isn't that enough? Did we really need him to realize that he lost hope too soon? I guess so. the movie seems to be about loss of faith. but with the military appearing at the end, the suggestion is that the man should have faith IN THE MILITARY. not in god, (unless god is acting "through" the military.)
So, what's the moral? harden's character is killed and yet her followers get saved. And there's a woman from the very very beginning of the film that leaves the supermarket to save her kids -- and she' been saved by the military too! so, super likable hero has lost everything. why? was it because he was un-neighborly? was it because he was a bad person?
I still can't really figure it out. and the more i think about it, the more I think the film has issues. But damn if some of those HP Lovecraft demon things walking in the mist weren't FUCKING AWESOME.
